The New Ideal in Education eBook

COLLECTIVE WORKS

Are greater than personal works. A pupil from
the old, individualistic school would object:

—­And what do you think of the work of Ibsen?

I: I think it is incomparably smaller than
the ancient Scandinavian legends.

He: Do you not grant that Alfred the Great
was the real creator of the English Kingdom?

I: Never. Millions and millions of human
creatures are built into this building that we call
England, or English history, or English civilisation.

He: And what about the man who built St. Paul’s
Cathedral?

I: It is a collective work, as are all the
great works that have been done. The architecture
of St. Paul’s is one of the ancient styles, and
no style in architecture was ever invented or created
by one person, but by generations and generations.

He: And what about Victor Hugo and Milton?
Are they not great poets?

I: Yes, they are if compared with certain minor
poets, but they are not great if compared with the
popular poetry of India or Greece. Mahabarata,
the Koran, and Zend-Avesta, and the Bible, are products
of collective efforts—­therefore they are
superior to every personal effort.

He: Do you not appreciate the great economists
and what they did for the household, and common-wealth
in general?

I: Certainly I do; but their work is too much
overestimated. Not a handful of economic writers,
like Adam Smith and Marx, but the common genius of
generations and generations arranged the house, set
the furniture, created the cooking, constructed towns,
invented plays and enjoyments, customs, language,
and so forth.

He: You agree, I think, that Shaljapin and
Caruso have wonderful voices, don’t you?

I: Yes, I agree. But don’t you agree
that a choir of millions of human voices would be
something much more striking and wonderful than any
solo singer since the beginning of time?

He: Don’t you believe in the wisdom of
wise men like Kant and Spencer?

I: No, I don’t. I think there is
incomparably more healthy and more applicable wisdom
in the popular sayings, proverbs, parables, and tales
of the nations, cultivated and uncultivated, in Macedonia,
Armenia, Ceylon, New Zealand, Japan, &c., than in
some dozen of the greatest thinkers of Europe.

He: Who is then in your opinion a great man?

I: Only a good man is a great man to me, who
is conscious that he is a cell in the panhuman organism,
or a brick in the building of human history.
Such a man is more a man of truth and of the future
than any conqueror, who thinks that a hundred millions
of people and hundreds of years have waited just for
him and his guidance, his work, or his wisdom.

That is what I would say to a pupil of individualism
in education. And at the end I would remind him
of Christ and His call after the children, and of
the new ideal of education, of panhumanism which stands
over individualism, and of the collective work of
people which stands over every individual work and
merit.